Recent happenings

This summer is off to a crazy busy start! I'll try my best to recap what we've been up to.

The weekend after Gray's birthday party we went on vacation with Paul's parents. I finally just posted about that, mostly with pictures. We were home for a few days and then headed to the beach with my family.

Gray had his last bottle a couple of weeks ago. Weaning from the actual bottle wasn't that hard but he is still TICKED off about us giving him a sippy cup with something other than water in it. He is not a fan of whole milk, as I predicted, and we have been at it for weeks now. We've tried different brands, mixing in formula, mixing in breast milk (we saved some frozen milk just for this very reason), and we've tried a hundred different sippy cups but all with very little success. He loves water so much that he is only interested in drinking just that. We have found that if we don't give him water at meals he will sometimes be thirsty enough to drink some of his milk but he isn't anywhere close to getting the amount he needs. Since the bottles got let go Gray has been, as Daddy would say, "crushin" some food. It seems like it went from him eating a little table food here and there to us making him three meals a day in no time. And this boy can put away some food too. He normally eats a waffle and a banana or yogurt (sometimes all three) for breakfast, a grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwich (not a fan of jelly) and fruit for lunch and we try to give him what we are having for dinner but meats and veggies are often hard to get down him.

After months of taking a few steps here and there, we have an official walker. On our first vacation a couple of weeks ago Gray really started to take more steps. When we got home, he was taking a few more steps at a time and doing so more times throughout the day. By the time we got to the beach a couple of days later, crawling was a thing of the past. We've already had a few injuries but other than that, I wouldn't say our lives have changed all that drastically. Oh if I had a penny for every time we heard "just wait until he starts walking". I swear I'm going to write a "JUST WAIT" blog post one of these days. Anywho, the first minor injury came from Gray falling into the TV stand at the beach. He busted his lip and there was blood involved y'all. It wasn't fun for me but he only cried for a minute and I know there will be much worse to come. The next minor injury came from falling face forward into the edge of the island in my friend Lindsey's kitchen. He's got a real good shiner from that one but it sure didn't seem to phase him.

We've been seeing a lot of this lately.

One might think that is just our sweet boy lying down for a rest. Nope. That would be our boy throwing himself down on the floor in the midst of a tantrum.  Several things are to blame for this behavior-1) He is going from eight teeth to 13 teeth, two of which are molars, 2) Two weeks of vacation and constant attention, especially from grandparents, temporarily ruined our child (I say that with a only tad bit of sarcasm) but most of all 3) We have a toddler and this is normal. It doesn't mean we aren't disciplining through it though so it's made for some tough, long days.

Paul and I celebrated four years of marriage. I am constantly humbled by the fact that God gave me Paul as a husband and I am so thankful for our marriage. I can honestly say the past four years have been the best of my life and I try not to take a second of it for granted. We enjoyed a nice date night at the beach that of course included food. We went to The Flying Fish at Barefoot Landing. I'd never been before but we will no doubt go back-it was DELISH!

I've been working out a lot lately and I have to say I am loving it. Like, I honestly can't get enough of it. It has been years and years since I've worked out this consistently and really enjoyed it. There are a handful of classes I take and Lindsey and I get to work out together most days, which makes it even better. Gray loves going too, although he is having his first stage of some serious separation anxiety. He has started clinging on to me for dear life when I drop him off but he gets over it very quick and plays great the rest of the time. I am hoping this is a short lived phase.

We hung out with the Sowers on July 4th. We celebrated America's freedom the way any other person in the south did-food and fireworks. Gray thinks Mason and Landon (and their toys) are so cool.


Thanks Pinterest! An easy and pretty healthy 4th of July snack.

I have been tutoring a lot. A lot of my students wanted to continue tutoring this summer and a couple of them are doing twice a week. Thankfully I worked out times with all of my students on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'd rather have a couple of long days than have to tutor for just an hour or two every day of the week. Paul is home with Gray most of that time but there will be some days when Gray will be hanging with my Gram or a friend or going to the first part of Daddy's soccer practice.

We got a new (used) car! We decided it was time for Paul's '94 Prelude to be replaced. We would normally drive a car until the wheels fall off and even though that car was almost 20 years old, we never had any problems with it and it only had 150 thousand miles on it. But the car seat wouldn't even install all the way and it wasn't safe for Gray. Paul has had to have him in his car a lot more often and we weren't comfortable with our precious cargo riding around in it anymore. Paul put his car on Craig's List just a couple of weeks ago and it sold pretty quick. We got a little more for it than we thought we would which was such a blessing. Within 24 hours of selling his car, God provided the perfect new used car for our family...a Honda Pilot. We decided on a Pilot because we wanted a third row seating option but didn't want a mini van and were pretty dead set on buying another Honda. But we knew God would have to work a miracle for us to find one we could afford that didn't already have a ton of miles on it. And that He did. Let me introduce you to the mommy/daddy-mobile that we hope to be driving for another 10 years...

Paul's summer is officially jam packed from this point on. He is doing several soccer camps and is having practice with his high school team three days a week, along with a couple of weekend trips away for tournaments. Come August Gray and I will see even less of him so we are going to soak up what little time we do have for the rest of this month.

I think that's about all for now. Y'all have a good week!